Here in HP » family

Grandfather and Woolens

Leora — Wed, 28 Jul 2010 19:52:08 +0000

I don’t know a lot about my maternal grandfather, whom I never met. Here he is on the left as a young man in front of a store that says Lipsohn & Friede Woolens. I do know that later in his life he worked on Wall Street. Did family members own this store? A mystery to me. More on my maternal grandfather. And much more on my maternal grandfather, Solon Friede.

Here is what I scanned in before tweaking the photo in Photoshop:

For more sepia photos, visit:

Ruby Tuesday Challenge

Leora — Mon, 05 Jul 2010 14:59:24 +0000

Can anyone guess what this is? Hint: read this post about our summer visitors. Another hint: the name of the image file. Finally, this didn’t really work.

For more photos with a little or a lot of red, visit Ruby Tuesday:

Guinea Pigs of Highland Park

Leora — Sun, 04 Jul 2010 02:51:36 +0000

We have three guinea pigs visiting us this summer. This is Vanilla Cream. I sometimes call her Vanilla Bean. We nicknamed her the Adventuress.

This one is named Apricot. She is a favorite of one of her owner’s daughters who is away at camp. She doesn’t move around quite as much as Vanilla Cream, her sister.

This is the Mama of Vanilla Cream and Apricot. I think her real name is Stickers, but we call her the Mama. We also refer to her as the protectress.

This post will be a clue to a question I plan to ask for Ruby Tuesday.

For more Summer Stock photos, visit Robin:

Promised Land

Leora — Thu, 06 May 2010 00:07:31 +0000

From the title, perhaps you were expecting something biblical? Or about American history? Sorry to disappoint, but this is a post of my son’s latest episode of Motor Wars. Enjoy.

See a previous Ruin Rui episode.

Red Afghan and Goblin Reader

Leora — Mon, 19 Apr 2010 19:35:15 +0000

This originally was going to be a post with a photo of the red afghan that my grandmother crocheted many years ago. However, my daughter showed up and posed with her book in front of the afghan. Of course, the photo with her in front of the afghan reading The Princess and the Goblin by George MacDonald is far more interesting than the others with only the blanket.

For more posts with a little or a lot of red, visit Ruby Tuesday:

Grandfather on Boat in Sepia

Leora — Wed, 24 Mar 2010 18:26:48 +0000

This is a photo of my maternal grandfather, whom I never met, on a boat. No idea who the man on the left is – the captain? I am guessing the photo was taken before my grandfather went to Russia as a salesman for Ford(?) and met my maternal grandmother, whom he married in Russia and then returned to the U.S – my grandmother and mother came a few years after, needing special permission to enter the country (they came in 1929, one month before the stock market crashed).

• More on my maternal grandfather

• • •

How many of you had relatives that came through Ellis Island? My paternal grandparents did and possibly my maternal grandparents and mother as well. I highly recommend American Passage: The History of Ellis Island by Vincent Cannato. He writes about the different commissioners of Ellis Island and their styles, Castle Garden (the immigration inspection predecessor to Ellis Island), nativist vs. immigrant lobbies, and recent politics of rebuilding Ellis Island as a museum.

There is a funny passage in the book where Theodore Roosevelt declares at a dinner that “he had chosen [Oscar] Straus without regard to race, color, creed or party. To that, an elderly and increasingly deaf Jacob Schiff nodded and said in his thick German accent: ‘Dot’s right, Mr. President. You came to me and said, ‘Chake, who is der best jew I can appoint Segretary of Commerce?”” Sad are the descriptions that investigators bring back of the situation in Eastern Europe – poverty, starvation and disease were too abundant in the late 19th – early twentieth century.

For more photos with sepia, visit Sepia Scenes:

Great Grandmother in Sepia

Leora — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 17:59:47 +0000

This is my great grandmother – my father’s mother’s mother. Her name was Feige, which means bird in Yiddish. The Hebrew version of the name would be Tzipora. Feige ran an inn somewhere in the Catskills or thereabouts.

I didn’t have to do anything to the coloring of the photo – it was already sepia.

For more sepia photos, visit Sepia Scenes:

Great Grandfather in Sepia

Leora — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 16:02:47 +0000

As a follow-up to my post about my grandfather, here is a photo of my great grandfather. I know little about him, but my father did tell me he was originally from a town called Gogol in Poland.

For more Sepia Scenes:

Selling Eggs in the Depression

Leora — Sun, 31 Jan 2010 01:27:05 +0000

This past week my daughter and I watched a movie together called Kit Kittredge. The movie itself was fine: good triumphs over evil, as it should in a movie for a 7-year-old. It takes place during the Depression in the 1930′s, and the people in the film experience loss and lowered economic status. There were some underlying, Hollywoodish type themes – for example, is Robin Hood a good guy? Is it OK to rob from the rich and give it to the poor? (the film seemed to imply yes, and I would say no – rich people should give charity, not be the victims of theft). The mother of the main character, a girl named Kit, decides to take in boarders in order to be able to keep their house. Somehow “selling eggs” becomes symbolic of stooping low, and near the end of the film the mother does acquire some chickens so they can sell eggs as well, which Kit is not happy about (but she accepts).

What bothered me in particular about this was that my paternal grandfather sold eggs in the Depression! That was how he supported his family of seven (five children). He would venture out to the egg farms in New Jersey and bring them back to Brooklyn to sell. My father said at some point he helped with the accounting; at the end of each month, my grandfather would have no money left and need to start a new. There was never any savings, but at least they had food to eat.

What was your family doing in the 1930′s?

Update: See Risa’s post about her grandfather who had a store in Brooklyn.

Thirteen Years Ago – Remembering Pain

Leora — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 10:17:25 +0000

וְהֵרֹנֵךְ–בְּעֶצֶב, תֵּלְדִי בָנִים

in pain you shall bear children (Bereishit 3:16)

So, 13 years ago my little guy came out like a cannon ball. No time for the doctor to show up, no time for the epidural. The nurses were in a panic; they thought they would have to deliver the baby (a resident at the hospital did). There’s a technical name for women who deliver babies very quickly. I can’t remember it – I just call it “cannon ball pain.”

And then the parsha (portion of the Torah reading) tells me that I’m going to deliver in pain. No kidding.

At least it wasn’t emotional pain, like that of losing my mother. Her yahrzeit (anniversary of her death) is tonight.